Palin's Alaska Redux

Just a brief revisit to the hypocrisy inherent in former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's television tribute to the natural beauty of her state, now that the program has hit the airwaves.

Her violation of the legal distance requirement designed to prevent disturbance of the brown bears she was filming from her fishing boat was a relatively minor incongruity in her TV eulogy to her native surroundings.

The lady on your television screen extolling the majestic wilderness panorama and spectacular wildlife of Alaska is the same individual who as governor:

• Sought to spread oil rigs across the nation's last great intact wilderness ecosystem, namely the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in the northeast corner of the state.
• Promoted aerial slaughter of wolves, and even bears, from helicopters. Indeed, she approved killing of 60 percent to 80 percent of the state's wolves, supposedly to build up the population of hoofed animals for sport hunters' gratification. To encourage the canine turkey shoot, she offered a150 bounty for receipt of every left front leg of a freshly killed wolf. The wolf has long been a major symbol of Alaska's untamed vastness, but no wolves appeared in Palin's first of eight episodes. Maybe they will turn up later on, and then again, maybe not, and if not, we now know there is a good reason.
• Appointed a state game board without a biologist, but including her high school basketball coach, to make key managerial decisions about the fate of Alaskan wildlife.
• Sued to block federal endangered species protection for polar bears and Cook Inlet Beluga Whales, the very sort of creatures she waxed lyrically about in her reality TV series. She also supported oil drilling in bear and whale prime habitats, hardly a move conducive to preservation.
• Backed the development of an open pit mine that threatened to contaminate the Bristol Bay ecosystem boasting the largest sockeye salmon run in the world.
• Sought to introduce snowmobiles that would have shattered the stringently protected tranquility of Denali National Park, which she exalted in her video.

Bottom line: Sarah Palin's Alaska is a brazen attempt to create illusion out of reality.

P.T. Barnum would have loved her.

Edward Flattaus fourth book Green Morality is now available.